Scholarly record

HISTORICAL LEGACY OF INDUSTRIAL TOWNS IN THE URALS: URBANISTIC AND SOCIOCULTURAL ASPECTS

T. Bystrova

Abstract

Small industrial towns of the Ural region (about 200 in number) are mainly one-company towns, their history dating back about 300 years. Most of them are now experiencing economic decline because raw materials have already been exhausted, and agglomeration processes intensify the outflow of population. However, they constitute a unique settlement system, well thought-out and adjusted to the climatic conditions, and retain lifestyle, system of values and mentality aimed at the active interaction between man and nature, which implies the minimization of human impact thereon. The roots of this tradition can be traced in the culture of metallurgical proto-towns of the South Urals in the second millennium B.C. Its decline begins in the middle of the 19th century with the advent of large capitalist production aimed at quantitative indicators, and continues with the modernization processes of socialist Russia. The article aims to prove that the major urban planning and architectural indicators of small industrial towns of the Urals comply with the modern criteria for sustainable development. Taking historical facts, photographic evidence data, and materials from the Urals folklore (fairy tales by Pavel Bazhov) as a basis, the author shows the need to study and maintain the historical experience in urban planning and architecture, and compares this experience with that of a number of other old industrial regions. These studies may help to define economic and sociocultural "development points" of the Ural region as a whole.

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